I pointed over my shoulder at the door. "When did you notice my shoes? You were looking at your phone when Icamein."
Riley rested his head against the booth and laughed. "You get really bogged down in the process, don't you, Shortstop?" He brought his hand to his open collar and dragged his fingers over his sternum. "I noticed your shoes, even if you didn't catch melooking."
The waiter saved me from responding when he appeared with a plate of small pretzels and an interest in my drink order. Riley watched while I asked about the beers and wines available, and then nodded in approval when I requested a Harpoonsummerbrew.
"Last weekend was wine, tonight's beer. You're an equal opportunity drinker," he said with a smile. "Good to know. These days, I stick to wine and beer, too." He pointed at the plate between us. "These are my favorite pretzel bites in the city.Trysome."
I shot him a sharp look. "Are you just trying to get me in a good mood?" I asked. "Idideat lunchtoday."
"Oh yeah?" he asked, dipping two pretzels in the accompanying sauce. "What did you have? Based on you yelling at me about noticing your shoes, I'd say it was an iced venti skinnylatte."
"Almonds," I replied. And an iced venti skinny latte but I wasn't copping to thatjustyet.
Riley tried to fight a laugh, failed. "Almonds?" herepeated.
"Chocolate-covered almonds, yes." I folded my arms across my chest. "It was an appropriate amount of calories, fat, protein, andcarbs."
He shook his head and ate another pretzel. "I don't want to live in a world where a few almonds—chocolate or otherwise—are lunch." He pointed to the plate and pushed his beer toward me. "Eat. Drink.Please."
I glared at the pilsner and pretzels. I hated being told what to do. Just fucking hated it. But then my stomach growled—goddamn digestive muscles—and Riley shot me a pointedglance.
"People think that a rumbling stomach is the sign of hunger," I said, reaching for his glass. I drained the beer and then selected a pretzel for dipping. "It is not. The muscles of the stomach and small intestines are always contracting, and those contractions make more noise when the organs areempty."
Riley gazed at me, his expression flat. It gave me a moment to study him while choosing another pretzel. He was wearing jeans, a tailored shirt with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and a pinstriped vest, and his hair was a wreck. It looked like he'd been tugging the dark strands in every conceivable direction. His eyes were rimmed with a bit of red and his lids heavy, as if he'd been rubbing them or hadn't gotten much sleep. Perhaps both. There was a small notebook beside his phone, and a mechanical pencil tucked into the spiralbinding.
And he was still more attractive than I knew how to handle. Even tired and irritable, and ordering me to eat his pretzels and drink his beer, he was hot as fuck. I bit into another pretzel and offered him a smallsmile.
"Would you say the chip on your shoulder is massive or epic?" he asked. There was no hint of amusement in his tone, and he was staring at me with more ice than I'd believed he could muster. It didn't feel like we were sniping at each other anymore. "It might be semantics to you but I'm trying to get a feel for what I'm dealingwithhere."
But then one of his big hands found my leg under the table. He squeezed and rubbed his thumb along the hollow of my knee, and I started to believe I'd been all wrong about this man. There was the player and there was the overgrown kid, but there was so much morethanthat.
* * *
"Let's do this lightning-round style,"Riley said when he'd inhaled half of hisburger.
"Just the basics," I said, wiping my mouth. "We don't need to gocrazyhere."
"Crazy, meaning tattoo origin stories?" he asked, pointing to the ink on the inside of my leftbicep.
I glanced at the ultra-fine lines and shook my head. "Yeah, we're not going there tonight," I said. I waved at him with a french fry. "I take it you're fromBoston?"
He tipped to his head to the side. "I grew up in Wellesley," he said. "It's a suburb just west of thecity.You?"
"Nevada," I said. I barreled on, and didn't give him a second to offer a sideways comment about the Silver State. Everyone had something to say about Vegas and brothels and Area 51. "Obviously, I've met Erin. Otherfamily?"
"My parents are dead and I'm the fifth of six kids in my family,"hesaid.
It was the dual impact of the deceased parents and enormous family that had me cocking my head and blinking in surprise. Even by aggressive estimates, he wasn't old enough to have lost both parents unless there'd been an accident. Or two hits in the genetic disorder lottery. I withheld the barrage of questions that I had about the cause of their deaths because the only time it was appropriate to ask those questions was in a clinical setting, and this tavernwasn'tthat.
"But everyone thinks I'm the youngest," he continued. "Either I'm that immature or they stopped counting Erin. Their low expectations certainly offered me the leeway to live my twenties to theirfullest."
I wanted to hear his misshapen stories but I didn't want to find myself liking him. If we were attending events together and going away for a weekend, liking him meant that I'd start believing the ruse and we couldn'thavethat.
I didn't have any man-free manifesto on living my truth or being my best self to support this argument, but I was still taking the hits from my barely-there relationship with Steve. I wasn't ready to let myself feelthingsyet.
Feeling things was fuckingscary.
"Just the basics," I repeated. "We're going for cocktail party passable here. We're not writing Wikipediaentries."
